


Honestly, That's All I Ever Wanted

by chockie



Category: Persona 4
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-10
Updated: 2017-07-10
Packaged: 2018-11-30 09:35:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11460864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chockie/pseuds/chockie
Summary: The boys being boys. Swing sets bring out your deepest secrets. (Swing sets are the true power?)





	Honestly, That's All I Ever Wanted

The train ride had left Souji fighting off yawns, but he tried his best to remain amiable as Yosuke trotted forwards in the maze of suburban housing. The pace didn’t falter, though a sleepless night meant Souji found it difficult to keep up, and he felt his already weary eyelids grow heavier. Unawares, Yosuke continued at his brisk walk for a few meters until he noticed the lack of presence close behind him. He turned around. 

“Souji? You okay?” 

Souji exhaled, took a moment, swept a little bit of the bowlcut out of his eyes and looked up at his partner now looming before him, concerned.

“I’m fine. Let’s go.” A tiny huff; so out of character. As if he had taken offense at the mere implication he was weak or even  _unprepared_.

“Well… Okay.” 

They continued their walk. Yosuke had finally slowed down, thank the gods, but he was certainly exhausted still. He briefly considered asking for a break, then shook it off. Meeting his prospective boyfriend’s parents formally took highest priority, and he shook it off. Still, it wore away at him. 

“Look, Souji, we can stop somewhere-”

“ _No.”_ It was now Souji’s turn to surge forward with what little reserves of energy he had left with a sense of purpose, albeit one hindered by this sheer exhaustion…

“Ah, for fuck’s sake.” Yosuke grabbed one of Souji’s hands that happened to swing backwards at just the right instant and at the contact, he froze. The boy stepped ahead of Souji, looking a little sheepish with a hand scratching at the back of his head, but the hand holding Souji’s wrist never loosening its grip. “We’re going to go somewhere else. Don’t ask where- it’s kinda-” 

“But… Your parents.” Souji himself was surprised at the trace of a whine in his voice. Although, he reasoned, it was only fair for him to be so anxious, as this logical progression would enhance their bond and further their relationship. 

“My parents,” Yosuke huffed, blowing strands of his hair out of his eyes in the process. “-can wait a little bit. Wanna hear something super gay?”

“Yosuke-”

“My  _boyfriend’s_  health is currently more of a concern to me than them waiting on us for a few minutes.” The gentle holding became more insistent, turning into a tugging as once again Yosuke grew impatient, though for what reasons now Souji had no clue. “Idiot,” the boy muttered. Even in the pleasantly cool temperatures of fall weather, his face was hot, all the way up to his ears. He nudged his scarf up to cover the worst, most obvious offending parts of his face and narrowed his eyes.

“Yosuke-”

“We’re almost there. Partner-” Souji’s wandering, lazy gaze was met with one of laser focus from Yosuke as the boy turned back to… do something. They had stopped again in the middle of the street, for whatever reason. Souji was honestly too tired to come up with an explanation. Yosuke opened his mouth to finish his sentence, then as if he had realized better, closed it again. But the look in his eyes did enough- how to describe it?  _Melancholy around the edges, but what stands out the most is… Whatever is apt to describe the feeling of “Please understand,” that was it, all there, welling up in the depths of his simple, average Joe brown eyes that were so easy to fall into and lose yourself in forever and ever._

He hadn’t realized it, but Yosuke had prodded him gently to subconsciously cover what little distance was left between this mysterious destination and the two boys. In his happy thoughts that had surfaced as a defense mechanism to combat the exhaustion, he did not notice anything, nor did he really care that he didn’t notice… Except for the live sensory input of Yosuke, of course; Souji giggled. Giggling was not a very Souji thing to do, but Yosuke was holding onto his hand, and he was in just another city he didn’t recognize like all the other dozens of cities he had moved to in the past and everything in his surroundings was really just a blur and the only constant in his whirlpool life was this new entity named Yosuke Hanamura which was holding him, he could feel it right then, and for fuck’s sake if he couldn’t break the facade to enjoy the company of the one he loved, why bother having any emotions at all? Yosuke was the first to break him out of it at all, anyway. Yes, he deserved it. 

Souji sighed dreamily. The fog in his mind showed no sign of lifting, and the eyes he didn’t even realize were closed in the first place opened slowly to reveal Yosuke’s face before his staring intently. The lighting was very lovely, Souji noted. Very orangey and pink, fitting for him. Yosuke is very orangey.

“Souji. Just checkin’ if you’re all there right now, cause you’re really spacing out and it’s  _kinda_  starting to creep me out a little, dude.” 

Souji watched the big closeup of Yosuke’s face jump backwards and reveal the rest of his lanky form standing and crossing his arms. 

“Souji. Earth to Souji?” The small Yosuke became bigger as he leaned in and waved a hand in front of Souji’s swimming vision.

“…Yeah. Hey.” 

Yosuke smiled in relief, leaning back again. “Whew. Thought for a second you were just totally gone.”

The smile Souji had grown to silently adore seemed to work as a finally much needed medicine for his debilitation. It was as if everything began to fall into focus, beginning with Yosuke himself and then spreading outwards around him and even though the colors were just a little bit more saturated than what was probably normal, everything was kind of in focus again and- most importantly- Souji felt  _in control of himself_ again. He took stock of his surroundings quickly. 

Yosuke had brought them to a children’s playground. He was sitting in the seat of a pair playground swing.  It was definitely a  _young_  children’s playground, because the jungle gym and the bars were tiny. He probably could have hit the bars with his skull just by walking under them. Why? Souji asked silently, looking at Yosuke, inviting an explanation. 

“Big part of my childhood. Spent a lot of time playing here. Not having any friends kinda does that to you, you know?” The impeccably genuine-seeming laugh struck Souji. He couldn’t pinpoint what.

“I used to swing on the swings all the time. They were my favorite part of any playground, really. Like it’s okay, it’s not  _weird_  to swing on your own sometimes, you don’t always have to have someone else there. That’s what I liked about it.” Yosuke had turned away at this point, interlocking his arms behind his head and wandering around the tiny playground. 

“Why don’t you give it a shot now,” Souji suggested. 

“Heh. I haven’t done it in years. And like, it’d be weird, you know? It’s already kinda weird as it is, taking you here and remembering all the shit that happened.” He looked back at Souji now, with a strange sad fondness in his eyes.

“But all the stuff that happened to  _us_ , you know? The murder and everything… I felt like I could start afresh. Haha.” A moment passed, as if he was weighing it out in his head- and he turned back, and gingerly stepped towards the vacant swing next to Souji. 

Souji smiled. 

Yosuke buried his hands as deep into his pockets as possible, his head bowed, probably in embarrassment as he walked towards the tiny swing set. Souji found it endearing. Yosuke mumbled something out the side of his mouth about “not a kid anymore,” and Souji nodded. He understood, of course. Yosuke plopped himself neatly into the center of the seat, causing the chains to rattle a little. Souji never took his eyes off of him. 

“You have to move to swing, you know,” Souji said. 

Yosuke dipped his face deeper into his scarf. “I know! Jeez.”

Without ceremony, Souji kicked his feet off the well worn ground and pushed himself backwards. He felt his head loll back when he reached the farthest displacement from the swing’s equilibrium point and he looked at the setting sky, the fiery oranges and browns and warmth that embodied this guy he met and the stars dotting the edges of his vision. And then he swung forwards again, and he got a face full of the view of Yosuke’s childhood neighborhood and he felt like somehow he had achieved another level of connection with him. Somehow. He closed his eyes and hung tightly onto the flimsy chains holding the swing up, and inhaled deeply in the cool air. 

His eyes opened again when he heard the squeaking sound of the other swing moving too. The movements were small, tender- scared, even, but Yosuke was swinging too. For a few moments they swung together- Souji taking it in full, Yosuke tentative still, but the silence was oddly companionable. In his state, though, he soon slowed, and their paces matched, their gentle swinging more akin to comfortably slow rocking. 

“The other kids used to give me so much shit, you know?” Yosuke said, suddenly. Souji looked up. 

“’Cause like,” Yosuke kept his eyes trained on the ground. “You know how little kids always say that if two people are swinging at the same pace, next to each other, they’re ‘married’? Stupid, right? I thought it was stupid.” He laughed, but it was an empty laugh.

“I never swung with anyone. Nobody wanted to when I got on the swing sets, and all. I didn’t let it get to me, of course, duh, but they were all just… such  _assholes_  about it, you know?” Yosuke kicked at the dirt. The impact pushed him, and then their swings became just a little out of phase. Like he was just a tad behind Souji, always catching up.

“But they all told me stupid shit, like, all the time. ‘Hanamura’s never going to get a girlfriend, what a stupid virgin loser’, and all that. ‘Hanamura probably wouldn’t even be able to score a  _boyfriend_ ,’ even. Funny how that turned out though,” And finally, their eyes met again. “Because I definitely met you.”

Souji kicked at the ground mid-swing.

“Heh. That was pretty lame, huh?”

Souji watched Yosuke’s face as they moved in unison. The small breeze created from their swinging blew Yosuke’s hair around in such a surreal way, it left him mesmerized. 

“…Huh. We  _are_  swinging at the same pace now, huh? Guess we’re supposed to be married now. Haha… How stupid.” 

“That wouldn’t bother me.” Souji’s eyes were now somewhere else- staring at the lights in people’s windows of the houses flicking on, now that it was getting late- but he could feel Yosuke’s boring into him.

“That was a joke, right, partner?”

“Haha,” Souji’s laugh rang clearly. “I guess.”


End file.
